so i finally got to participate in an actual ARES activation last weekend, not just a drill. there was a pretty bad storm system that came through our county and the county EOC requested we staff some positions for about 18 hours while some cell infrastructure was down in the southern part of the county. ive been in ARES for about a year now but all ive done is the monthly nets and one SET exercise so this was kind of a big deal for me personally.

overall it went really well i think. i was assigned to a shelter site with another ham i hadnt worked with before and we handled message traffic back to the EOC for most of the night. nothing super complicated but there were moments where i had to use ICS forms for real and not just in a classroom setting and that was actually kind of eye opening. the training does prepare you but theres something different about doing it when it actually matters.

anyway my questions are kind of scattered. first, how do you all handle logging during an activation when things get busy? i felt like i was dropping the ball keeping up with both the radio and the written log at the same time. second, does your group do any kind of after action review? ours did a brief one the next day but i feel like we could have gone deeper. and honestly im just curious how other groups run their activations vs what we did, feels like there's a lot of variation out there

congrats on your first real one, that's always a bit of a milestone honestly. the logging thing is a real challenge and i dont think anyone tells you how hard it is to stay on top of it when traffic picks up. what we do in our group is try to have dedicated logger whenever possible — basically one person on the mic and one person writing. not always feasible depending on how many people show up but when you can swing it, its way better. we use ICS-309 for the comm log and yeah keeping it current in real time is tough solo.

on the after action stuff — ours varies a lot depending on who's running the EC at the time. best one i've been part of was where the EC sent out a written form beforehand asking specific questions so people could actually think before showing up to talk. the ones that are just open discussion in a circle tend to meander. if you have any pull with your EC it might be worth suggesting something more structured, most ECs i know appreciate the input if you frame it right.

yeah the logging thing tripped me up too when i was newer to this. i actually kept a little pocket notebook just for myself during activations separate from the official log because i found i could jot stuff faster in shorthand and then transfer it over when things slowed down. probably not ideal from a purist standpoint but it worked and nothing got lost. your mileage may vary on whether your EC is ok with that approach though.

one thing i'll say — 18 hours on your first real activation is no joke, thats a solid chunk of time. did you do shift rotations or were you basically there the whole stretch? our group has had some issues with people burning out during longer events because nobody wants to be the one to say they need a break. relief operators are underappreciated i think.